Getting a call hierarchy in java

Question

I am having real trouble tracking down a bug and it would help be a lot to know which method called a certain method. Is there an easy way to get a call hierarchy from java? Java is a small part of the app so I cannot compile and run the whole app in eclipse/net beans so I don't have access to an IDE debugger's call hierarchy.

Answer 1

Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();

or

Exception ex = new Exception();
ex.printStackTrace();

It's fairly slow, but fine for debugging purposes. API docs here.

Answer 2

Java is a small part of the app so I cannot compile and run the whole app in eclipse/net beans so I don't have access to an IDE debugger's call hierarchy.

You dont need to run the app at all. If you make a project in Eclipse, you can use its built-in Call Hierarchy tool to find all of the possible places that call a method.

There is a trade off: The Call Hierarchy tool will give you ALL of the places from where a method is called. This is a good if you want/need to know all the possibilities. Neslson's suggestion of Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace() will give you the places from where a method is invoked during the process of you program for this invocation. The nuance is that you might not run through every code path during this invocation. If you are seeing specific behavior and want to know how you got there, use the getStackTrace() option.